Freedom Force vs. the Third Reich Interview

Computer Games Magazine has published an interview with Irrational Games’ Ken Levine, in which the lead designer talks about their upcoming superhero RPG sequel, Freedom Force vs. the Third Reich. A snippet:

Q: Graphically the sequel seems to keep the original’s Silver Age art style but with some improvements in special effects and in the game’s destructible environments. How hard was it to keep the visual style for the sequel but still make the game better looking than the original Freedom Force?

A: The visual aesthetics were a lot easier in many ways. For one, we’d already created Freedom Force, so we had our groove on. Also, the jump to Gamebryo allowed us to run wild with the style. It really is quite a leap over the original. In the original, it was surprisingly tough to find a balance between emulating comic book style and meeting the high standards of PC gamers. You’d think making a comic book game would mean that you could get away with simple low poly characters and objects. To some degree, we did with the original. However, even though things weren’t as simple in their composition, I don’t think the original looked nearly as good as it could have. Now that our budget on everything is so much higher, we’re able to create much higher resolution textures with tons more objects in the world and all sorts of crazy new rendering features and effects.